Washington, Dec 30 (AHN) The CIA carried out a drone strike earlier this month on a dock facility along the coast of Venezuela, marking the first known land strike by the Trump administration inside the oil-rich South American country, according to local media reports.

The strike targeted a remote dock that US officials believed was being used by a Venezuelan gang to store drugs and transfer them onto boats for shipment, CNN reported Monday night (local time), citing anonymous sources familiar with the operation.

No one was present at the site at the time of the strike, and there were no casualties, reports Xinhua news agency, quoting CNN.

US President Donald Trump said earlier on Monday that the US knocked out a "dock area" where alleged drug traffickers loaded the boats up with drugs in Venezuela last week.

If his words were accurate, it would be the first known land strike by the Trump administration against the oil-rich South American nation, reports Xinhua news agency.

"There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs," Trump told reporters in Florida. "So we hit all the boats, and now we hit the area -- it's an implementation area, that's where they implement, and that is no longer around."

He didn't reveal whether the Pentagon or another US entity carried out the operation.

Venezuela's government has yet to respond.

Trump first revealed the strike in an interview with WABC radio on Friday, saying that his administration knocked out "a big facility" allegedly producing illicit drugs in Venezuela.

"We just knocked out -- I don't know if you read or you saw -- they have a big plant or big facility where they send the, you know, where the ships come from. Two nights ago, we knocked that out, so we hit them very hard," Trump said in the phone interview.

For months, the United States has been ramping up its military presence in Caribbean waters near Venezuela as part of what the White House has described as an anti-narco-terrorism campaign. It has sunk about 30 alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific since September, causing more than 100 deaths.

Venezuela has repeatedly accused Washington of seeking regime change and military expansion in Latin America.

On Friday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro expressed willingness to engage in dialogue with the United States on the basis of mutual respect, provided that the United States refrains from interfering in Venezuela.